


Ordeal

by AlterEgon



Category: Protector of the Small - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Treat, Yuletide 2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 00:32:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/pseuds/AlterEgon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We never get to see what any of the other squires experience in the Chamber of the Ordeal. So here's my take on Neal's Ordeal of Knighthood</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ordeal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trojie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/gifts).



> Dear Trojie,  
> You requested something Neal-centric for PotS. I started writing this, then came up with the story I uploaded as your gift and put this one aside. I think I want you to have it anyway, though.  
> This is not a nice story, but that kind of goes with the subject matter...

"Have you given up on this foolish idea of yours now?" his father asked harshly as he tended to a cracked bone gotten in combat practice that morning.

He bit his lip and shook his head without taking his eyes from the tips of his boots.

It had been a horrible day of training. His entire body was sore and bruised from the many blows he had been unable to block. He was five years older than any of his year-mates, and more clumsy and helpless in the practice yards than any of them.

As a noble's son he was supposed to have had at least fencing lessons for a long time, but either his training had not been taken seriously enough by his tutors or he must have forgotten everything he had ever known about handling a sword during his time at the university.

Five years younger than him and every single one of them had given him a good beating over the morning. And the morning before. And the one before that.

The duke's voice was icy. "How could you ever think you could take your brothers' place? They were better than you could ever hope to be."

He did not answer. Even if he had not somehow remembered that he was not supposed to speak, he had nothing to say. It was true. They were all right – every single one of them. He was a failure. Years at the university, and he was not even fit for the classroom work ten year old boys did at the palace. He invariably failed mathematics, made a mess of his essays and got flustered and confused the simplest of bows in etiquette. Shame threatened to choke him.

His year-mates looked at him with anything from distrust to pity to derision because he, at fifteen, tried to be one of theirs, when boys his age were supposed to be either well along their training as squires or picking another path than that of knighthood.  The others would not let him study with them or sit with them over dinner because they thought he would lord it over them because of his age, and left out no opportunity to show him that, in the end, they were all that far ahead of him anyway.

There were knights who started training older than I, he told himself, but try as he would, he could not remember who they were, how old they had been or where he had the information from. He might as well have made it up to soothe his own mind.

It was not a very soothing thought right now.

"Get out," his father said. "I don't care what you do, but do not come back here before you have learned your place. You will never be able to replace my sons."

Now he did raise his head slightly, looking up at the man before him through his lashes. This was wrong. His father never treated him this way. He was as worthy of becoming a knight as any of his brothers, and he had always gotten support for whatever plan he thought right to pursue.

Closing his eyes, he shook his head to clear it from the confusion that threatened to overtake him.

The smell of smoke, blood, vomit and urine filled his nostrils. The sounds of moaning, sobbing and crying, interspersed with screams and shouting healers, made him wish to slap his hands over his ears and curl up in some corner to escape from it all.

He forced his eyes open. He had duties to attend to.

They had overrun the palace at dawn, an army too large to even hope to defeat. Their defenses had inevitably fallen. By dusk, Palace Hill was a smoldering, blackened mass of ruins, plundered, most of its residents and defendants left dead or wishing they were.

Somehow he had been among the few fortunate enough to be left relatively unharmed. For what felt like days, although it could only have been hours, he had labored alongside the others well enough to do so. As they dug the survivors out of the wreckage, he had joined the healers – far too few for the never-ending stream of injured coming into their improvised infirmary.

He had been ordered to keep his healing Gift for those who had a chance at survival and not waste it on any others. It had never been supposed to be his choice who lived and who died, and yet that day he had passed by the beds of those he deemed beyond help, ignoring pleas and cries for help as well as accusations. Those beyond speaking had been easier, but he still remembered every single one of their faces.

They assaulted him, together with shame and guilt, whenever he tried to close his eyes for a moment.

The Prince's was among them, their training master Lord Wyldon, once again defending the King's family to his last breath. Wyldon had still been conscious, meeting his eyes with a look of understanding and acceptance that hurt him more than any curse sent his way.

There had been women and children among them. He had wasted some of his gift on easing the suffering of the latter, when he thought no one was noticing. How many he had condemned because of that, because he was later lacking that little bit of magic to heal someone else enough so their bodies could recover, he did not know.  It added to his own pain, making it hard to breathe through the knowledge that he had caused the death of innocents both by action and inaction that day.

Now his Gift was drained, and he was reduced to working with his hands as best he knew. He took a shuddering breath and steeled himself to enter the tent again to start his round.

Focusing on work was supposed to make things easier.

It did not.

There was too little of everything to go around. Gift, poppy, even bandages.

He passed a cot with the body on it unmoving and quickly growing cold. Kel, a squire like him, the girl who had thought to win her shield among them. Bloody bandages now covered crushed ribs in a chest that no longer rise and fell with the labored breathing he had seen before he had run from the tent.

He reached out to pull the sheet that served as a makeshift blanket up over her face. He expected tears, but his eyes remained dry. His inability to cry for a friend only added to the feelings of guilt and self-loathing that increased with every failure and inadequacy he had had to face that day.

Someone shouldered by him to take away the body and make space for someone still alive, pushing him out of the way and starting him down the row again.

There was Owen, regarding him from cold eyes, an expression of pain and hate on his face. His legs and right arm had been shattered beyond salvation when he had been caught under a toppling section of wall. Now he, too, was waiting to die.

He said no word, but those eyes, full of silent condemnation, followed Neal as he walked down the narrow aisle between cots.

The gratitude he got from some hurt worse than the curses others spat at him. He knew he deserved the latter. He had no place collecting the former, knowing that nothing he could do anymore would make a difference, to their lives or his.

He spotted red, and as if of his own accord, his legs took him to another patient.

Her face a blackened ruin from the fire that had been set to the royal quarters, her beautiful hair singed away, she was recognizable only by the _shukusen_ fan still clutched in her lifeless fingers.

Barely suppressing a scream of anguish, he threw himself down next to her, grabbing for her cooling hand and smearing blood from the slashed wrist on himself in the process.

He bit his tongue, hard, to keep himself from releasing the pain he felt, as he reached for the bloody fan.

The pain of losing the woman he loved alone would have been enough to choke him. Added to the shame, guilt and desperation that had already been heaped on him, the mélange of emotions was overpowering.

Holding on to the fan as if to a lifeline, his knuckles growing white around it, he turned it to point at his own throat. He barely heard the others call out to him and beg him to help them, do something, anything, to ease their pain.

But hear them he did. The fan dropped from his suddenly numb fingers to clatter loudly on the floor.

Now tears did come, a torrent of them, as he cried silently as if to wash away all the blood with his tears.

 

***

 

Neal fell to his knees on the cold, smooth flagstones of the Chamber, shivering in the thin linen garment the squires wore to their Ordeal. His breath came in ragged bursts, sounding impossibly loud in his ears in the quiet. He felt wetness trickle over his cheeks and quickly bit the back of his hand to stifle the sob that fought its way up his throat.

Only then did he realize that it was over.

The floor he knelt on was clean. So were his clothes, the only stains on them those of his own cold sweat.

Looking up, he saw the heavy door crack open, letting in a line of light from outside.

Staggering, he got to his feet.


End file.
